061: Anger is a Message

Psychologists describe anger as a secondary emotion. 

There’s always a primary emotion that’s driving the anger.

Picture an iceberg – Anger is just at the tip. Another emotion is beneath the surface that’s causing your anger to bubble up. 

So if you notice yourself getting triggered easily, check in to see what’s really going on. 

Here’s what most men are experiencing beneath the surface:

1. Stress
2. Shame
3. Fear
4. Sadness

Four super uncomfortable emotions that we tend to push down, causing an explosion later on with our wife or kids. 

This episode will teach you to use anger as a message – Figure out what’s really going on so you can lighten the load and be a more calm, approachable man. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Durable Dad Podcast, episode number 61. I started recording the episode and I've been in front of my computer all day and so I stood up and I have this big Louisville slugger baseball bat that's signed by Frank Thomas in my office and I took like 10 cuts with it and got some energy flowing, got some energy moving and hopefully channeling that through the mic to you so you don't have to listen to my stale energy.

Speaker 1: 0:53

The topic that I want to talk about today is not a new topic. We're going to talk about anger, but we're going to talk about anger in a new light, a new spin on anger, and we're going to look at anger as a messenger. When we feel that urge to slam our phone on the kitchen counter or pull over the car so we can yell at the kids in the back seat, that tightness in the jaw, that clenching of the hands, the defensiveness that we feel, it's a message. A lot of psychologists call anger a secondary emotion. You can think of anger as the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the surface, underneath the water, are primary emotions. So when anger is bubbling up inside of you and it's ready to burst, it's sending you a message and as you practice this, as you practice your relationship with anger, it won't bubble up and feel like it's about to burst. You're going to notice the anger twinge inside of you and as you get more familiar with it, you can stop and just be like all right, here comes a message. I need to check in, I need to take a few breaths.

Speaker 1: 2:11

What's going on below the surface, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through the four primary under the surface emotions that I see most often in guys, not just men that I work with, but also in myself. So the first one is stress and exhaustion. You've got a ton going on and you push yourself. Men push themselves hard to do more, a lot on their to-do list, to go, go, go, and we get triggered a lot more easily. Our anger can react much more quickly. And if you stop, why am I so angry? Sometimes it's because I'm just fucking tired, and one thing I was talking to a guy about the other day was building in margin, not being back-to-back with meetings, back-to-back with kids' activities, back-to-back with weekend plans and packing the full schedule in Building in margin to recover a little bit. So we're not as stressed out, not as exhausted. So that's the first one. The second one is disappointment and shame. So yesterday is disappointment and shame.

Speaker 1: 3:22

So yesterday I was in the kitchen getting lunches ready, getting breakfast ready, and Brenda's upstairs she's doing diaper changes, getting clothes out for the girls, and when she comes downstairs I was making oatmeal and she made a comment about how I wasn't putting milk on at the right time of the oatmeal-making process. And I stopped and I turned and looked at her and I was like are you kidding me? I'm trying to help here. Her few words that weren't even a jab or a knock at me. Right, she'd been upstairs, she'd been working on stuff. She came downstairs and just told me that the oatmeal is usually made this way.

Speaker 1: 4:06

Why did that make me feel angry? Anger is a message. So when I left and brought our daughter to daycare just in the car, I was like all right, tommy, what's going on here? Man, why did that comment trigger you? Why did you take it so personally? And what came up was that I just wanted her to say thank you. I just wanted her to tell me that I'm doing a good job. And I was telling a buddy about this and we laughed because it was like I wasn't doing a job. I'm a dad and some of the responsibilities are feeding your children, and I that's what I was doing. I was feeding my children and he was like you wanted Brenda to come down and say hey, tommy, here's a gold star. And that is what I wanted. That's good information to have.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Anger is the messenger, and it's letting me know that I wanted to be told that I was doing a good job. Because I feel like I'm not doing a good job. I feel like I'm not doing enough that I have so much going on and I should be doing more. Okay, that's the primary emotion I'm not doing enough, I should be doing more. There's the disappointment, there's the shame that I've been running around trying to do a lot and not paying attention to it. So then I become short fused and I get angry at little comments, all right. So stress and exhaustion, disappointment and shame those are underneath the surface.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Another one is fear. We don't acknowledge the fear that we have most of the time. Our brain is programmed to always be looking for danger, always be looking for threats. So we feel fear often because our brain is always on the lookout for something that would make us afraid and we don't acknowledge it very often. Us afraid and we don't acknowledge it very often. So we spend a lot of time worrying, thinking about the future, worrying about money, thinking about job security, thinking about our personal health or our health of our kids or our kids' success now or our kids' success in the future, and all of that worry is fear-based and I think a lot of the times when we lose our temper at our kids, it's fear-based.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Anger comes up the tip of the iceberg above the surface. Underneath the surface is fear. So when you feel yourself wanting to yell at your kids or grab your kids or you're feeling a lot of frustration towards them, stop and be like. What is this anger trying to tell me? And if we breathe into it, we'll probably see that I'm pissed off that they're not cleaning their room because I have a fear that they won't be organized and be able to go to college, and because a 13-year-old doesn't know how to keep their room straight, how is he ever going to get a wife when he's 25? It sounds funny and our brains can go there. So fear is another emotion that is underneath the surface.

Speaker 1: 7:13

And then the last one is sadness. So sadness, hurt, sorrow, pain that's one that a lot of guys will think that they shouldn't feel. They shouldn't feel pain, they shouldn't feel sadness, they should be tougher, and that can build a lot of pressure underneath the surface. So when we are noticing that we're angry more often and we ask that anger, what's going on? And one example that's coming up for me is a guy I was talking to last week. Him and his son have just been at it lately and usually he can parent in a calm way, but he hasn't been able to recently. And I just asked him like well, what's going on, what else is happening in life? And he mentioned that his dad recently got diagnosed with cancer. And as we talked about it, there was this sadness and sorrow that he hadn't been addressing, that he hadn't been thinking about or feeling. And when we talked about it, when we connected with that sadness a little bit, with that primary emotion, afterwards he felt lighter. He felt lighter and more spacious, and that's the benefit of exploring anger and the underlying emotions.

Speaker 1: 8:39

So, whether it's stress and exhaustion, disappointment and shame, fear, sadness, when you take some time with these, you don't react so quickly. You build this space and the anger that comes up it doesn't come up as quickly. Everything just goes a little bit more slow and you can be more calm, be more level-headed, feel more relaxed. So you want to catch yourself before you get angry. But even if you do react and your anger comes out in a way that you're not happy about, later on you can reflect why did I get so angry? What was that anger trying to tell me? Drill down to it. Connect with some of those primary emotions and build space. Create less pressure in your life, and that's always nice. If we can feel less pressure, the day-to-day is gonna be a lot better. Use anger as a messenger to help you out. All right, that's what I got for you this week. Hope you have an awesome one and I'll catch you next time.